What happened to the size of the clavichord as time passed?
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Listen to Keyboard Music by Bach (No, Not That One)
The extraordinary range of C.P.E. Bach, a son of J.S., is on display in a new album from the pianist Marc-André Hamelin.
The subject of the pianist Marc-André Hamelin's latest album is Bach — no, not that 1.
Hamelin — ever inquisitive in exploring the outer reaches of the repertoire, with recent releases of music past Sigismond Thalberg, Samuil Feinberg and Erno Dohnanyi — has at present turned to the extraordinary range of keyboard works past Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Johann Sebastian'south 2d surviving son.
C.P.E. Bach was a prolific composer and an important pedagogue, a significant influence on Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. (Hamelin's new album is a welcome companion to the iii volumes of solo Haydn that he prepare down, with ideal panache, a decade and more than agone on the Hyperion label.) Only if he was more than widely appreciated than his father well into the 19th century, that has certainly not been the instance more than recently.
In function, that'south considering C.P.E.'s category-defying scores challenge preconceptions of the history of music as information technology has come to be written — coming off as stunningly, even unnervingly, experimental. When did the "Bizarre" end, and the "Classical" begin? What constitutes "early music"? The piece of work of C.P.E. Bach invites united states of america to consider these questions anew, suggests the harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, who has recorded some of this music and wrote the booklet notes for Hamelin'south two-disc set.
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Hamelin takes us from a juvenile march C.P.E. wrote before 1725 to 2 of the extended, improvisatory fantasies he composed just before his death, in 1788. Asked in an interview to choice a favorite page from the scores, Hamelin chose the "Abschied von meinem Silbermannischen Claviere, in einem Rondo" ("Farewell to My Silbermannischen Clavier, in a Rondo"), a haunting tribute to a favorite clavichord in 1781. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Even for audacious pianists like yourself, the music of C.P.E. Bach is not exactly mutual. How did y'all pick it upwards?
My wife, Cathy Fuller, is one of the hosts at WCRB radio in Boston, and back in either 2008 or 2009 she played ane cutting from Mikhail Pletnev's Deutsche Grammophon recording of C.P.Due east. Bach. It was a little sonata in E minor; it's three movements, very meaty, about seven or 8 minutes. The piece ends suddenly, in the middle of a phrase. Bach simply decides to terminate information technology on a tonic outset inversion, which was a total shock to me. You simply have to look at Gesualdo to see how far some composers could get even very early in history, only this was really quite a shock.
By coincidence, I had just inherited a collection of scores which included six volumes of music that C.P.E. published very late in life, in the 1780s, for "connoisseurs and amateurs." So I ran to the music, and, sure plenty, that's exactly what C.P.E. was asking for — no diminuendo, no rallentando, zippo. Naturally I wanted to find out more, so I started reading from the half dozen volumes, and and so I bought everything I could find. I became very, very enthusiastic; the idea to tape some of these things was e'er in the back of my mind, but it took a while for me to get the wheels in motion.
When I started talking about this project, with no recording date in mind, I got a very nice email from Paul Corneilson of the Packard Humanities Found. He said, "Nosotros have an 18-book set of the complete keyboard works in urtext editions; would you lot like i?" What had been a project involving one CD became 2, because of the embarrassment of riches I was confronted with.
In a higher place everything else, I wanted to underline the richness of Bach'south imagination. I would similar to plead with pianists to look him up; it's never been easier.
So what distinguishes his music?
The element of angularity, and surprise, and constant delight in the unexpected was very much a office of Haydn, and he confessed that he owed a cracking debt to C.P.Eastward. Bach. There are some extremely daring modulations, and what I mentioned earlier is not the just fourth dimension he merely decides to cease a piece. In the slow movement of the F minor sonata I recorded, the heart section keeps modulating, keeps modulating, keeps modulating — and then suddenly cuts off at a very tense moment, very strange to the dwelling house key. Then there's three long beats of silence, and he just decides to go dorsum to the beginning, with no clear relationship between the two keys.
I've seen editions which accept "corrected" this to brand it more palatable, more normal. One that I found, really, was by Hans von Bülow, and you wouldn't believe the butchery task he performed on C.P.E.'due south music; it'southward unbelievable. For a while, there wasn't much more than that available.
Bach was writing at a time of peachy technological alter, as harpsichords and clavichords were giving way to fortepianos, a shift that immune composers to develop new means of expression. How would you respond to those who might argue that this music should therefore only be performed on the instruments of its time, rather than a concert grand?
I grew up with the mod piano, and information technology affords me all the pleasure, all the fulfillment, all the musical results I desire. So, equally much as I appreciate sometimes playing an old musical instrument — and I have, not necessarily in public — the music survives beingness played on the modern pianoforte. For me, that'southward enough; I don't demand anything else. There are and then many possible sonorities on the modern piano that, for me, that's perfectly fulfilling.
Technological change is in fact the subject of your favorite page, the middle page of a rondo that Bach wrote in 1781 as a farewell to his long-serving clavichord.
It'south an extremely affecting piece; I call up during the recording session I must have been in a bustle to go to it, because information technology was the first piece that I put downwards.
In the exact middle of information technology at that place is a moment: There'southward a fermata, and then of a sudden this E major chord. This E major chord is not something really outlandish, because you're coming out of B pocket-sized. Simply if you lot leave the right corporeality of silence before information technology, and if yous pay particular heed to the quality of the attack of this chord, that'southward one of the most magical moments that I'm enlightened of in all of music.
I read that C.P.Due east. apparently said to the admirer to whom he gave this Silbermann clavichord it's admittedly impossible even to play the piece on a clavichord other than this one. (C.P.Eastward. had had it for around 35 years, I think, so information technology was a very pitiful farewell.) But fortunately I paid no attending to that. It's interesting to know, and information technology shows you the ability of his convictions, just it's a denial of the possibilities that are obtainable on something like the modern pianoforte, or any other musical instrument.
Funnily enough, the score repeatedly notates an decoration that simply can't be achieved on a modern piano: a bebung, which is a form of vibrato. Do you but accept to ignore that, and accept that the pianoforte will make apology in other means?
I just tried to compensate elsewhere. What carried me through is the prototype of C.P.East. possibly improvising this slice, and and then later notating it, because it really does sound like an improvisation — similar playing for himself.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/18/arts/music/bach-piano-hamelin.html
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